This week in lifelogging: of food fads and world’s weddings

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Extreme food fads throughout history

One segment of lifelogging is the documentation of our meals. After all, we are what we eat and different cultures all around the world are partly defined by its varying food habits. One artist in particular, decides to take it to the extreme by exploring terrible constrictions of diets and deprivation in celebrities. In his series known as Still Diet, Dan Bannino intentionally sets up representations of these diets. The picture you see above is one of Lord Byron’s “Romantic poet’s diet”, comprising potatoes drenched in vinegar, poetry and soda water. In another, Dan features Bill Clinton’s cabbage soup diet and Kate Moss’ Hollywood diet. What’s your diet like?

Behold the future of food photography

Well, hang on! Before you run along and set up the dining table to feature your unique diet, maybe you’d like to check this out. With people all around the world obsessing over getting the perfect picture of what they’re eating, MWEB (a WiFi provider), decided to partner with South African restaurant El Burro to debut #dinnercam to the public. Wondering what exactly is #dinnercam? Simply put, it’s a lightbox that can instantly bring food photography to the next level. Here’s how it works. For absolutely no fee, diners who wish to take a more professional snapshot of their meal can request for #dinnercam, which features several light settings – from green to purple to traditional white. Subsequently, after snapping a picture, #dinnercam sends it right to your mobile device. Say goodbye to just sitting around and being envious of stunning food photography from all around the world. Are you a foodie who’s ready to try #dinnercam out or do you think that this is one step too far?

World’s biggest wedding

Besides food, one other major aspect defining different cultures of the world is this big event – weddings. From the blackening of the bride to jumping over a broom, all sorts of weird and wonderful wedding traditions exist and they are all worth documenting. For the couple you see in the picture above, how they wanted their big day to be different from others’ was to break the world record for the biggest wedding after walking down the aisle with a staggering 126 bridesmaids. The newlyweds, Nisansala and Nalin from Sri Lanka, smashed the previous world record of 96 bridesmaids, held by a Thai couple who got married in Bangkok. How would you like your big day to be different?

Making art out of the data of everyday life

From small events like meal times to bigger events like weddings, documenting them have become an integral part of our life and can be termed lifelogging. For avid lifeloggers like Eugene Granovsky, lifelogging could mean taking an Instagram photo at 8:36pm every day. To him, the whole point of this self-tracking is so that he can be the best person he can be. He mentions that any newcomers to lifelogging begin by tracking things that are easily quantifiable, like how much they’ve slept or the number of steps they’ve taken today. However, for him, he believes that lifelogging is as much a philosophy as it is about the numbers. And that’s why he takes the daily instagram, which serves as a trigger to remember what he was doing that day. “It’s the mundane parts of life,” says Granovsky. “That’s what makes it interesting.” For others like Stephen Cartwright, lifelogging data is turned into art. His sculpture Deviation, based on his physical location (latitude and elevation) over a period of several months, is currently on display, along with a dozen other life-data-based works, at the Elmhurt Art Museum in an exhibit called “LifeLoggers: Chronicling the Everyday.” How would you use your lifelogging data?